The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and do not necessarily constitute prior art.
MRI is a technique for imaging an object by using a magnetic field. MRI is widely used for accurate diagnosis of diseases because it presents three-dimensional images of cervical or lumbar discs, joints, nerves and ligaments as well as others including bones at desired view angles.
Simultaneous multi-slice imaging is a state of the art technology under development for imaging magnetic resonance signals in less time. The multi-slice imaging is a technique of, for example, acquiring MR (magnetic resonance) signals of a plurality of slices of an object within one TR (repetition time) interval, and performing a reconstruction of images with the acquired signals separated into images corresponding to the respective positions in the object. In an MR signal acquisition, the MRI apparatus may receive MR signals in an overlapping manner after being generated from a plurality of positions in the object, and when a final MR image is reconstructed, the overlapped MR signals may cause defects and noise.
Accordingly, there is a need for providing a method and apparatus for generating an MRI image having improved image quality by suppressing defects and noise caused by overlapped MR signals in the multi-slice imaging technique.
Applying the multi-slice imaging technique to a radial sampling for generating a single magnetic resonance image of a part (object) that is moving causes a positive radial distortion or radial expansion of the image. In the radial sampling application, MRI images of a plurality of slices are formed radially spread due to the magnitude of the read-out gradient changing every TR. Therefore, it is necessary to control the gradient for generating the MRI images using the multi-slice imaging technique applied with a radial sampling.